Principal's Daily

Good Morning Team! I’m sorry for the long piece but it’s worth it! Have a nice day and God Bless. PS Today is a Free Dress Day from Camila and Thalia our Principals of the Day.

Here’s a great piece entitled “The Happy Factor: Practicing the Art of Well-Being” by Julie Scelfo in The New York Times Education Life focusing on stressed-out suburban high-school students which DOES apply to ALL students at SJES. Scelfo reports on what psychologists say about cultivating lasting well-being and happiness. “Psychology is generally focused on how to relieve the negative emotions of depression, anger, and worry,” says Martin Seligman (University of Pennsylvania). “Freud and Schopenhauer said the most you can ever hope for in life is not to suffer, not to be miserable, and I think that view is empirically false, morally insidious, and a political and educational dead-end. What makes life worth living is much more than the absence of the negative.” Scelfo summarizes Seligman’s more positive philosophy: “[W]ell-being consists not merely of feeling happy (an emotion that can be fleeting) but of experiencing a sense of contentment in the knowledge that your life is flourishing and has meaning beyond your own pleasure.” The key is cultivating the components of well-being, which include engagement, good relationships, accomplishment, and purpose. Four strategies that Seligman and other psychologists have found to be effective: • Identify signature strengths. Write down a story about a time when you were at your best and re-read it every day for a week, asking, What personal strengths did I display when I was at my best? Creativity? Good judgment? Kindness? Loyalty? Courage? Passion? Forgiveness? Honesty? Writing down key qualities “puts you in touch with what you’re good at,” says Seligman. Then you can think about how to use those strengths to your advantage, intentionally organizing and structuring your life around them. • Find the good. Set aside ten minutes before going to bed, write down three things that went really well that day, and ask with each, Why did this good thing happen? This exercise “turns your attention to the good things in life, so it changes what you attend to,” says Seligman. “Consciousness is like your tongue: It swirls around in the mouth looking for a cavity, and when it finds it, you focus on it. Imagine if your tongue went looking for a beautiful, healthy tooth.” • Make a gratitude visit. Think of someone who has been especially kind to you and hasn’t been properly thanked, write a letter describing something he or she did that benefited your life, and then get together and read the letter out loud. Seligman reports that when people do this, there are often tears of joy: “It puts you in better touch with other people, with your place in the world.”• Respond more strongly. The next time someone you care about shares good news, go beyond the regular “That’s nice” response and express genuine excitement, prolong the conversation, and encourage the person to tell others or engage in a celebratory activity.